Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

@Jaredan ETAs are a terrible idea, but what about progress reports?

Kadavik·8/26/2015, 2:17:20 AM·15 votes·4,104 views

Jaredan, I understand how posting ETAs in the boards would only create community backlash in case something went wrong and more time was needed to fix an unexpected problem with the project. It’s a terrible idea, I agree. However, what’s the harm in us getting short progress reports? I’m not asking for us to know what you guys are up to 100% of the time, just a simple status update every now and then.

I think small things like this could really change our little corner of the boards. First of all it would create consistency in our posts. The themes that we discussed in our threads would be the ones we knew Art and Narrative were working on right now! Here’s an example. Say someone from the narrative team posted “Writing Jax’s new bio, keep an eye out on his champion page!” the prevalent theme in Story and Art for the next few days would certainly be posts discussing Jax’s character, visuals and what we want from him in the future. This way you reds could see what we want from Jax when it comes to his identity much more clearly and cohesively than any post about Jax once a month ever could!

These progress reports could also calm our anxiety when waiting for new lore releases. They’d let us know just what’s going on. For example: Jaredan, you could post something like “editing champion short stories” that way we would know what you guys are up to. It would be such a great and unifying experience between us the community and you guys at narrative. Not to mention it would be extremely satisfactory to read that the wait is over a week later or so with something as simple as "champion short stories finished, hope you enjoy them!" This doesn’t only need apply when it comes to narrative. Art would definitely benefit a lot from posting these too. It would be pretty fun to see Ironstylus post “just finished modeling Taric 's new shield, I must admit it’s looking FABULOUS”. Like I said before this could only improve the Story and Art boards and create a better experience for everyone while maintaining an easy not-much-effort required connection between you guys at Riot HQ and us here at Boards.

Finally, if any of you guys have a better way to implement this idea or achieve this goal please tell me so. See you in the Rift.

23 Comments

RiotRiotJaredan8/28/2015, 4:16:21 AM20 votes

Other than new Champions (concepts, thematic cohesion, character intros (the new bio format), and introductory promos), champs in the ChampUp pipeline (concepts, character intros and story promo), we're working on new character introductions for Shadow Isles Champions, and some stuff I really can't go into, sorry.

Once the pipeline on a couple of recently spun up teams that we're a part of are in full working order, we'll be able to pop by more often.

We've put back some of the additional work that we want to do to finish the Shurima character intros a bit to focus on some stuff that we think will give a bit more enjoyment in the short to medium term. The Shurima stuff will be coming, but we've shifted priorities to take advantage of an opportunity.

Vague, I know, sorry, but we'll speak to it further when we're able.

Impetual8/26/2015, 7:41:01 AM1 votes

In my opinion Jaredan won't give progress reports.

He's currently trying to cover up the mis-management of LoL's new lore system.

He doesn't have time for that stuff, assuming he's doing his job...whatever that is at the moment.

Cuix8/28/2015, 4:46:01 AM1 votes

ETAs have never been a bad idea in reality. Riot keeps saying they are because what actually happens is we get an ETA, total silence after, and then the date passes by without any update on what's going on for several months after. Plus, Rioters had a weird habit of turning guesses/estimates into promises or statements of fact.

Orisi8/28/2015, 9:14:07 AM1 votes

Here's the problem with progress reports, and you can pretty much see it in Jareden's response; the lore work that is coming is being tied in with the new content being put out, and that means that it comes under the same sort of secrecy new champions or skins come under pretty much by necessity. We can be told it's Shadow Isles because we know Halloween is the next big event, but it's also going to fuel rumours the next new champ is from the Shadow Isles, and rightly so.

But what else can he really go into without giving us a fair idea as to what Sort of projects are being worked on overall.

It's a nice idea but there's nothing really Jaredan can do other than be vague and non-committal.